Wednesday 6 July 2016 18.51 EDT
First published on Wednesday 6 July 2016 12.53 EDT

A former Fox News anchor has accused network boss Roger Ailes of sexual harassment in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, claiming the cable channel chairman fired her after she refused his advances.

The suit, which former Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson filed in New Jersey court, claims Ailes “sabotaged her career because she refused his sexual advances and [she] complained about severe and pervasive sexual harassment”.

As part of Ailes’ retaliation, her lawsuit claims, Carlson received diminishing assignments to high-profile interview subjects, and was cut from her regular segment on Bill O’Reilly’s weeknight show. Carlson’s complaints included being passed over multiple times for advancement within the network, and seeing a drop in her pay when she began hosting The Real Story With Gretchen Carlson.

The lawsuit accuses Ailes of “ostracizing, marginalizing and shunning” Carlson before ultimately firing her from the network on 23 June, the day her contract ended. Ailes made clear to Carlson that her “problems”, meaning his treatment of her, would improve “if she had a sexual relationship with him”, her lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit adds that Carlson confronted Ailes over “discriminatory treatment” nine months before her termination. Ailes used the meeting, the suit claims, to make a direct sexual advance toward Carlson.

“I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better,” Ailes said, according to the lawsuit, which says he added: “sometimes problems are easier to solve” that way.

Carlson’s lawsuit also claims that her former co-host Steve Doocy created a hostile work environment. She accuses him of “regularly treating her in a sexist and condescending way”, and says he once put his hand on her and pulled down her arm “to shush her during a live telecast”.

According to Carlson, that was not an isolated incident, and Doocy treated her like a “blond female prop”. The suit accuses him of mocking her during commercial breaks and off the air, either shunned her or belittled her contributions to the show.

When Carlson complained to Ailes, she alleges that he blamed her. In response to her complaints of sexual harassment, the suit says, Ailes griped that Carlson saw the world as if it “only rains on women”.

Fox News has begun an internal review, a spokesperson for the network’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, said in a statement late Wednesday.

“While we have full confidence in Mr Ailes and Mr Doocy, who have served the company brilliantly for over two decades, we have commenced an internal review of the matter.”

Ailes also released a statement, in which he called the allegations “defamatory” and “retaliatory for the network’s decision not to renew her contract, which was due to the fact that her disappointingly low ratings were dragging down the afternoon lineup”.

“Ironically, Fox News provided her with more on-air opportunities over her 11 year tenure than any other employer in the industry, for which she thanked me in her recent book,” he continued. “This defamatory lawsuit is not only offensive, it is wholly without merit and will be defended vigorously.”

This is not the first time Carlson has alleged bad conduct on the part of her coworkers, though it is the first lawsuit. Her complaints about sexism on-set sometimes made it to air: in 2012 she walked off the show in response to her co-hosts’ jokes about women.

Carlson had been with the network for 11 years, moving in 2005 from CBS News to Fox, where she began her eight-year tenure on the morning show Fox & Friends. In 2013 she was moved from the show to her own program, which she alleges in the suit was an act of retaliation for refusing to sleep with Ailes.

The anchor has broken with conservative orthodoxy recently: on 14 June, Carlson came out in favor of a renewed assault weapons ban, something few of the Fox News’s generally rightward-leaning commentators have done.

The suit also accuses Ailes of “ogling” Carlson in his office, making her turn around “so he could view her posterior”.

“After learning of Carlson’s complaints,” the suit claims, “Ailes responded by calling Carlson a ‘man hater’ and ‘killer’ and telling her that she needed to learn to ‘get along with the boys’.”